What’s Wrong With First Past the Post?
First Past the Post (FPTP) is Canada’s current single-member, “winner-controls-all” electoral system where the candidate with the most votes wins.
False majorities, where the governing party receives a majority of seats with a minority of the vote, are a common side-effect of our system.
FPTP also causes instability as minority governments elected under this system tend not to last long due to the ruling party dissolving parliament early in its search for absolute power.
FPTP also causes us to frequently flip-flop between ideologically opposed governments leading to costly policy reversals (the cancellation of policies put in place by the previous government).
Canada is one of the very few industrialized countries still using FPTP in modern times. Most democracies around the world use one of the many systems of PR to elect politicians and form their governments.
Democracy is supposed to be a “battle of ideas” in which people’s political representatives make them present in the decision-making process. Representation ensures people have the right to be heard in parliament.
Other side-effects of FPTP include:
Wasted votes
Strategic voting
Vote splitting
Voter apathy
Inequality of voting power
Divisive politics / campaigning
Decreased political diversity
